Port Said in Egypt, the brothers rose to become well-know identities in their adopted home of Perth. They pioneered a tobacco growing and production empire with its agricultural base in Manjimup in the State's deep southwest. By the 1950s Michelides Ltd was producing a million cigarettes a day at its landmark factory on the corner of Lake and Roe Streets in Perth. However, by the 1960s the Federal Government's opening of the market to international tobacco monopolies resulted in the destruction of the local industry. At the story's centre are the two self-educated, ambitious, polyglot brothers who by astonishing energy and careful planning and diplomacy became not only tobacco barons of Western Australia but major benefactors and leaders in that State's Greek community."--back cover.